The park

On Friday (yikes, that was just yesterday), we went to the park and let Ryanne run around for about an hour. She thought this was quite possibly the coolest thing ever.

The park across the street is huge! They've got 3 playing areas for the kids, a pool (actually, I think it's 5 of them), and at least one stadium with a walking track on the outside of it.

Play area 1 was covered in fine gravel that R thought was great fun to dig about in. She started wandering through and collecting big rocks as we went. Eventually she ran out of room in her tiny little hands and started dropping them. Not long after that, she dropped them all and gave up. In this section, there are 2 old fire trucks and a train for climbing and playing on. We put her up in one of the fire trucks and she sat and turned the wheel and pushed on the horn (for which I uttered a honk honk). There are also rope ladders that she only had interest in chewing on. There is a maze made out of bars where she got great enjoyment out of running under the dividers while I chased her through the normal way. There were two types of teeter totters, one that bounced which she adored and one that was the normal lever set up which she didn't get much out of.

Then, we moved to area 2 which is the first of the sand pits. She LOVED digging in the sand and kept trying to steal the other kiddies sand tools - mental note for the summer that she needs some stuff for playing in the sand. This area also had lots of metal & plastic platforms and bridges and SLIDES. She loved the slide. She even made it down once still sitting up instead of having fallen over, making her quite pleased with herself. There was one from the platforms that she would go down, but the favorite went from play area 2 to area 3 and she got to walk up a ramp to get back...great fun. We even got to the point where I could ask if she wanted to go again and get an emphatic nod.

Area 3 had a wooden playscape with pulleys that the kids could use to pull buckets of sand up and play with them. Ryanne mostly enjoyed being on the ground and playing in the bucket as it got pulled up by L'il Bro. She tired of this area rather quickly, though.

All in all, a great visit. We got home and she took a 75 minute nap - her second nap of the day so that duration is unheard of. Guess we'll have to get to the park more often.